Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

words, ‘Those of us whohave our injuries from the war…’2 He later claimed to have attended his first Partymeeting during his months at Munich university. (Reworking his drama ‘Michael’3GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 49he would elaborate: he had heard an unnamed speaker of extraordinary magnetismspeak— ‘Among utter strangers… workers, soldiers, officers, students. But then allof a sudden, the flow of his speech is unleashed. It’s like a light shining above him…Ê theaudience is aglow. Hope shines on grey faces… A miracle. Among the ruins is someonewho has shown us the flag.’) He had applied there and then to join the Party, heclaimed. In 1927 the Goebbels legend would maintain that he had actually advisedHitler in 1919 when the Party programme was drafted. All of this was quite untrue.He would also suggest that in 1923 Hitler had commanded him to infiltrate into theoccupied Ruhr, where under an assumed name he had led a resistance cell not farfrom the martyr Schlageter himself, until the French had deported him. ‘If we hadbeen too refined,’ he would brag in 1943, ‘none of us would have survived the year1923.’ Goebbels too was behind the ‘letter’ which would circulate in later years,which he had allegedly sent to Hitler in Landsberg jail (‘Like a meteor you soaredaloft before our astonished gaze.Ê .Ê . Your address to the court in Munich was thegreatest speech in Germany since Bismarck.’)These legends endured even in the obituaries printed by his enemies.4 ‘I am not alittle astonished,’ wrote his fellow Nazi Karl Kaufmann in June 1927, ‘that Dr Goebbelsportrays things so differently. The rumour I have heard in Berlin, that Dr Goebbelswas already advising Adolf Hitler in Munich on the programme of the N.S.D.A.P. in1919, is also totally untrue.’ Dr Goebbels had neither joined the passive resistance in1923 nor taken any active part in it, said Kaufmann: Goebbels was not even an earlyParty member.5 True he would somehow wangle a low number, 8762, for himselfbut he did not in fact join until early 1925.Fortunately Goebbels utilized idle hours in July 1924 to write up his early life.Hitler is mentioned only once, in a passing reference to 1923: ‘Bavaria. Hitler.’He was rootless, restless, and now friendless too: Richard Flisges had left to workin the mines. Challenged by the Albertus Magnus Society to give due account of hisprogress, Goebbels replied grandly on January 10, 1922, that he was looking out fora position in the press or theatre. After carrying half a dozen of his pieces, theWestdeutsche Landeszeitung published no more although he heard that they had attracted50 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHmuch attention. He worked briefly as the newspaper’s art critic but was made redundantjust before his birthday in 1922.6 A few days later he delivered a publiclecture on Oswald Spengler and other contemporary literature; he praised Spengler’scritical remarks about the Jews, which had gone to the root of the matter and ‘mustinevitably bring about a spiritual clarification of the Jewish problem,’ in Goebbels’view.7 His mother’s suitcase would hold clippings of just a dozen newspaper contributionsby Dr phil Joseph Goebbels.8 Among the literary products of these otherwiseidle years were another drama entitled ‘Heinrich Kämpfert’9 and manuscripts withtitles like ‘Gypsy Blood,’ ‘Those who adore the Sun,’10 and ‘A Wandering Scholar, I.’11His poems were called, ‘Deep in my Reveries I wandered the Dark Forest,’ ‘Prayer,’‘The Death Song of the People,’ ‘Sleep Baby, Sleep,’ and ‘At Night.’12 The latter reads:I awoke one night.You lay by my side.The pale moon played on your left hand,And it was white as snow.But your right lay on your heart,And rose and fell,As your breast did rise and fall.THE hand, the breast in question belong to Else Janke. One morning he sees a prettygirl in Rheydt and Herbert Hompesch whispers that she is Else Janke, a schoolteacherand orphan. She is well built and motherly; he, so slight that, seeing himfrom the rear once, she thinks him only twelve years old.13 He will later describe hervariously as ‘a rare mixture of passion and prudence’14 and as ‘a lovely, sweet-temperedchatterbox.’15 Interestingly he will write: ‘I often think of her as my mother.’16What strikes her most, she relates years later, are his expressive eyes. She and FritzPrang’s girlfriend Alma Kuppe both teach at the Rheydt school attended by Goebbels’young sister Maria. Else teaches needlework and physical instruction. They make upa foursome, go sailing, or on excursions together to places like the local RheydtCastle.17 He will later recall an evening with her in the summer of 1922: he kissesGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 51her, she tries to slap him, he makes as if to leave, she detains him, and they walk outall night long while they talk about their lives. ‘I tell her about Anka,’ he will recall,adding with a trace of disappointment, ‘She remains demure.’ Rebuffed again!From Baltrum, a Frisian island resort, she wires him not to come: he borrowsmoney and disobeys. They stroll each evening along the sand dunes, but again he hasto record, ‘She is demure.’ Up in her room he swears his love for her. ‘I kiss her to myheart’s content. She resists no longer.’ Inspired by seeing Else nude for the first time(‘just as God created her’) he will rewrite his long-suffering ‘Michael’ to include ascene where the eponymous hero struggles to conjure up the Muses on a Frisianisland— ‘I lie on the dunes and wait for a word from God’s mouth.To his annoyance Else will not admit to their relationship in public. The crippledDr Goebbels has much to learn about the mysterious fluids and capillaries that, mixedtogether, make up the female brain.Perhaps he still derives most pleasure from the anticipation, the plotting, and theromantic language of an affair. His girls are bowled over by the literary style and theintensity with which he woos them. He sets Else and Alma to copying out his articlesand verses. But his writings are universally rejected by the big Jewish publishers likeMosse and Ullstein in Berlin. He remarks to Else that you cannot get ahead unlessyou are ‘one of the boys.’ Else